Poetry, Art, Medicine & Society

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Monthly Archives: March 2010

Lillian and David Brummet are the gracious hosts of the blogtalkradio program, Authors Read, a weekly fifteen minute broadcast presenting live as well as prerecorded readings by storytellers, poets & writers. Produced in Canada, the show is international and both the featured artists and the audience are diverse, representing many styles and approaches to writing.

This coming Monday the 22nd at 12:00 PM , I’ll be reading fromPrimitive Mood. Since the show is archived, it’s possible to listen to it any time after it appears, using the link here.

I’m excited about the recent selection of my short film “Astronaut Goes From Migrant Fields To Outer Space” for inclusion in the Hearts and Minds Film Festival in Delaware next month. This will be the film’s premier screening at a festival, and is in fact the first film that I have submitted for consideration.

Here is a synopsis/director’s statement:

“In the U.S., immigration is both proud and tragic legacy. Except for the original people from whom a continent was stolen, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Yet each new wave that arrives with few possessions and many dreams find they survive, not because of, but in spite of, what they find: the least rewarding and most dangerous work, and the contempt of those already here.

As a child, Jose M. Hernandez trekked from Mexico to the fields of California where he picked strawberries with his family under the tense and squalid conditions migrant laborers still experience. In the summer of 2009, he traveled into space as an astronaut on the Discovery space shuttle.

His story honors both the desperate struggle of immigrants and the greatness of which they are capable.

As a filmmaker and a poet, and someone of Latino descent, I feel I must contribute in some way to the search for justice. Because as an issue, immigration is so contentious and sensitive, I have also been striving to find a perspective that rises above the standard arguments, that is positive as well as principled, in the hopes that I might reach those on all sides. In making a film about the astronaut Jose Hernandez, I believe I have found this point of view.”

Here are some details about the Hearts and Minds Festival and its artistic mission:

Our festival showcases “super-independent” films from around the world – things you won’t see screening at just any movie theater or on TV.

Each entry was selected not only for its excellence, but for its focus on social issues and the human condition: from faith to homelessness to race and identity to disability culture. In an era of increasing social and economic challenges, these films herald a timely call to awareness and service. There will be something for everyone who enjoys media that features remarkable characters from many walks of life, fiction and non-fiction films of all kinds.”

“If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, multiply that image by 24 or 30 frames per second and imagine the impact on an audience that a well crafted, issue-oriented film can have! In the best tradition of documentary film-making, independent artists today are lifting their “voices” by pointing their lenses at subjects critical to the health and sustainability of communities around the world. They draw attention. They celebrate. They rage. They entertain. And always, they create conversation.

People the world over love movies. Perhaps like no other art form, good films bring people from disparate backgrounds together, in one room, to share the entertainment experience. By selecting films that focus on topical subjects such as economics, crime, literacy, the environment, and themes that address the human condition like relationships, health, survival, legacy, Hearts and Minds Film seeks to acknowledge new works and to inform, inspire and empower diverse audiences in community-based settings.”

David Moolten

About me: I'm the author of three books of poetry, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005), and Primitive Mood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and was published in 2009.

I'm also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine, and I live, write and practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Audio Files

'Cuda(Originally appeared in The Kenyon Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright(Originally appeared in The Southern Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright

I don't yearn for their steep excursion
Into fame and fortune, for it had
The usual price, and Orville died bitter
And Wilbur died young. I envy them
Only the slender and empty distance they left
Between them and a seaside's grassy bluffs
In mild December, the frail ingenuity
Of dreams, a lifetime's hopes made of string and cloth
And a little puttering motor that might have run
A lawn mower if the brothers had put their minds
To one first. For dumb exhilaration, nothing --
Not an F-16 thundering from its base
In Turkey nor my redeye circling O'Hare --
Comes close to what they must have felt
For less than a shaking, clattering minute
Clearing all attachment to the world
Of dickering and petty concerns: for some
No other heaven. So I take note of them
As they took notes from the lonely buzzard, obsessed
To the point of love with the ghostly air
And the small fluttering things that wandered
Through it. Eccentric but never flighty,
Bookish but not above nicking their hands
In bicycle shops and basements, they lived
With their sister and tinkered with the future.
Propelled by ambition, the mandate
It invents, they still heeded the laws
Of nature, trimmed needless weight, saw everything
Even themselves as burden, determined
Not to crash and burn. Sheer will launched them,
Good will, because those first forty yards
Skimming shale and reeds were for everyone.
Face down between the struts, staring at the ground
As it blurred past, they failed like anyone
To grasp the implications. But legs flailing
They hung on, buoyed by never and almost
And then just barely. I could do worse
Than their brief rapture, their common sense
Of purpose. Or I could, if only
For a moment, exalt them, go along
With the jury-rigged myth, the quaint
Contrivance that lets them rise above it all.

Russell Teagarden is an Editor of the NYU Literature Arts and Medicine Database and helped lead the Medical Humanities elective at the School of Medicine this past winter. In this blog post, he experiments with creating a text collage from recent reviews of George Saunders novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. […]

Howard Trachtman, MD Department of Pediatrics NYU School of Medicine Throughout history, reading books has often been viewed with deep suspicion by figures in authority. The Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publically burned thousands of objects including books on February 7, 1497 in Florence, Italy, an infamous episode that […]